The Difference Between Shadows and Darkness
by unfold
Summary: Jim sees a therapist. Set in the midst of season two.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This story idea came to me randomly at work and would not let me go. The style of this is shamelessly stolen from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. (That is, the answers without questions.) I'm not quite sure about this story, so let me know what you think. If all goes according to plan, I'm hoping to continue this up until the end of the second season.

* * *

Downtown Scranton, a red brick building, suite G, up a flight of narrow wooden stairs that make him feel like he's falling. 

He taps his foot nervously while he waits. Reads a magazine for kids, solves all the puzzles in twenty seconds or less. He eyes the others in the room, diagnoses them in his mind, wonders if he has much at all in common with any of them. A woman tears a tissue into teeny tiny strips and then balls them up. He reads a women's magazine and learns which bathing suit would look best with his bust. But it's December and he wonders why he got here so early.

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"To be honest, I don't really know why I'm here. No, that's a lie. I know why I'm here. It's my mom. She wanted me to come, so I came. I don't have- I mean, I'm not depressed or anything. Not clinically at least. Or…I don't know. Maybe."

"Yeah, yeah. There was an incident, as my mom keeps referring to it. But, I mean, how would you react if you were at Thanksgiving dinner with your married, successful siblings and you tried to look into your future and you just saw black? You'd probably want to lock yourself in the bathroom and cry, too. It wasn't a big deal. I didn't try to kill myself or anything. I wouldn't do that."

"Because there's- I just wouldn't. That's not something I'd do."

"Sure, I've thought about it. Who hasn't thought about it at some point? It's like one of those things you sometimes just think in passing when you're really upset or frustrated. You just think, "Boy, I could kill myself right now," but you don't. You move on."

"Yeah, sure, I've thought about it recently. But I wouldn't."

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He used to make out with this guy's daughter when they were thirteen. He lived down the street, they'd sneak into her basement and make out. Like it was something they needed to practice. She had braces and they made his lips hurt. She said his tongue felt like a sponge.

And this is who he sits across from. This is who he's supposed to talk to. He knows for a fact that this guy is going to have dinner with his parents next week. He knows for a fact that patient/doctor confidentiality is bullshit in this scenario.

He wonders how Trina's doing. He thinks about asking. Maybe she's single. He tries really hard to remember what she looked like.

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"I'm sorry, what?"

"Yeah, I guess it's true that I've been down lately. But it's not something that needs- I know why I've been down. I don't need someone to figure it out for me. I know what my problem is. It isn't some chemical imbalance."

"This girl. God, this girl. Your wife, do you remember what it felt like when you realized she was, you know, it? The one you were going to marry and be with for forever?"

"Yes, exactly. That sink in your gut. Not a bad sink, just a sink- Like, I don't know, maybe your heart needs more room all of the sudden so your gut sinks and it's one of the best feelings in the world and you'll only have it once. No other girl is going to make that happen. Just that one. And I felt that sink like two years ago."

"Well, she's engaged. To this guy who's so oblivious. But they've been together for a long time. Ten years, almost eleven. So I guess they're just so comfortable with each other that it doesn't matter that they're completely incompatible."

"I know her. I know her better than I've ever known anyone in my life. And she's it, I'm telling you. She is it. I felt it."

"I just know."

--------

He's chewing gum. Isn't it unprofessional for a therapist to be chewing gum during a session? Won't it make less stable patients feel like he isn't paying full attention to them?

He has this notepad, but he doesn't write anything down.

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"My job. It honestly sucks the life out of me. I feel, I mean, I actually feel my brain turning numb. You know the term "mind numbingly boring?" Yeah, I can feel that. Like you could stick a pencil in my ear at around two in the afternoon and poke away at my brain and I wouldn't feel a thing. I'd just keep on talking to whatever client about the difference between Mother of Pearl and Eggshell."

"I really haven't given any thought to a career. I dropped out of college in my junior year, so…"

"I don't know. It just wasn't clicking with me. I felt like I was wasting time. I wanted to live life or something. I was twenty years old, what did I know? I thought I could drop out of school and go traveling. That's when I realized you needed money to go traveling and that's when I started looking for work."

"It was a fluke thing, really. A friend of mine was looking up job listings on the internet and saw this one for Dunder Mifflin Paper Products. He told me about it, said it would be easy enough for me to get. At that point, I was just doing filing stuff and other random odd office sort of jobs. Then I got promoted to sales rep and that's where I've been ever since."

"I'm honestly terrified at the thought of advancing any higher in the company. I don't want that. I always said that it was a temporary thing. Not what I would be doing with the rest of my life. I never intended to stay for as long as I have, but I did."

"This girl. God."

"No, I'm okay."

--------

He has a salt and pepper mustache and glasses that he won't push back up on his nose. He folds his hands in his lap on top of that notepad that he won't write anything on. Well, there's one thing written on the first line: _Jim Halpert, 12/5/05. _

That's it. His name and the date. Like he isn't even worth anything else. Not even to this mustached friend of his parents' who's pretending like he wants to listen to all of his problems.

He clenches his jaw and glances at the clock.

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"I'm sorry. It's just- I don't even know why I'm here. I don't really need therapy. But you know my mom, she's a worrier. And, hey, as long as she's paying, right?"

"Oh, so she told about that incident, too? Wow. Maybe she should come in here and do the session for me."

"I was just out drinking with my brother. And maybe I drank too much. But-"

"Yeah, I had to be taken to the hospital. Yeah, okay. But, it was one time and it's not like-"

"Is that what she told you? That's a lie. I was not alone at the time. No, I was out with my brother. Having a guy's night out, you know? It just got a little out of hand. That's all."

"No, that's ridiculous."

"Uh, I think time's up."

--------

He walks quickly down the stairs, feeling dizzy and almost tripping over his own feet.

Out on the street, the sun shines hard and he pulls his coat tightly around him.

The cold still manages to seep in.


	2. Chapter 2

She parts her lips sometimes when he gets up to leave every other Monday at three to make his four o'clock appointment. He hasn't told her. He won't tell her. He thinks she already knows anyway.

He parks his car on the street, a few blocks from the building. He watches his feet on the sidewalk, making sure the one is placed safely in front of the other. The sky is gray and the air smells crisp like burning wood.

Downtown is decorated for Christmas with lights and banners and shop windows filled with festive displays. Christmas carols feel like their being pumped through some citywide speaker system. Little Drummer Boy is playing as he walks to the building, but on the next block it's Rudolph and then it's Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas which his mom used to sing to him when he couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve and it makes him drowsy to hear it.

He's a block away from the building when the snow starts to fall.

It doesn't fill him with that childlike feeling of joy like it usually does. Instead he can't help but feel as if maybe he's trapped inside of a snow globe.

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"I've been tired lately, really tired. But I think it's just winter and the fact that when I get up in the morning it's still pitch black outside. I hate waking up in the dark. It doesn't feel right."

"Yeah, other than that I'm doing pretty good."

"Well, as you know, my family is all still pretty local except for my sister who lives in New York. She's coming down with her husband and, yeah, the whole family will be together. It'll be nice."

"At work, we're doing this Secret Santa thing . I got her."

"This green teapot that she said she saw in this store a couple months back. She really likes tea and this way she can make it at her desk at work."

"I'm also, uh, thinking about putting a lot of random inside joke sort of things inside of it. Like little bonus gifts."

"Well, this one time the power went out at work and so we played Boggle by candlelight for hours and had this really intense tournament while we were waiting for the power to come back. She won and I blamed it all on the timer which I still have so I thought I'd put that in there."

"Yeah, she'll like it."

--------

Now, he writes something down on that notepad.

He leans forward to try and see what's being written, but the writing is tiny and the letters blend together.

He thinks maybe it says something about "infatuation," but maybe not.

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"Anyway, we're having this party later in the week which will be horrible, but she usually makes those sort of things more fun."

"My boss will probably find some way of getting around corporate's rule about not having liquor at office parties. And- I mean, she's really adorable when she's drunk."

"I didn't? Oh. Pam. Her name is Pam."

--------

The couch that he's sitting on isn't comfortable. It's supposed to be, but it's too soft. He sinks into it too deeply and he feels like he won't be able to stand back up.

His mustached therapist (though he hesitates to call him "his therapist", because he doesn't even really want to be here) is wearing argyle socks and a seasonal tie with classic looking Christmas trees on it. Which is strange, because he could've sworn this guy was Jewish.

He feels himself sink even further into the couch.

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"My roommate Mark's out of town right now. He went to visit his mom who lives in New Jersey. So, yeah, I guess I've felt a little lonely lately."

"I don't know why I'm- I mean, what do you want me to talk about?"

"I'm not feeling anything, that's really the thing. I just really don't feel anything much these days. I don't know what it is."

"I guess it happened gradually. I don't know."

"About a month ago, I stopped dreaming. That sounded really overdramatic, didn't it?"

"No, it's not like I don't remember my dreams. I just honestly stopped dreaming about anything. I can remember blankness, maybe just white. Like static or something. Is there some psychological condition where people stop dreaming?"

"Yeah, I didn't think so."

--------

He is acutely aware of his shaking knee. It's a nervous habit he's always had. He puts his hand on it, but it just keeps bouncing up and down. He feels like it's giving him away. He feels like it's giving this guy exactly what he's looking for. A weakness. Some telling sign that there's actually something wrong with him.

There's nothing wrong with him.

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"I'm seeing this girl, Katy."

"Yeah. She's pretty, funny, not really smart, but she's not stupid either."

"About five months, maybe. In the beginning, it was on and off. But these past two months, it's gotten more serious."

"No."

"I try, but I can't."

"I think you know the answer to that."

--------

He watches more notes get scribbled onto the notepad. He doesn't bother trying to read them, because he already knows what they say about him.

There are thirty minutes left in the hour and he notices that everything in this office is some deep shade of red.

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"I was thinking about telling her. Do you think I should tell her?"

"I don't know."

"Because I know what she'll say."

"That she can't leave him after ten years of being with him."

"Yeah, exactly. It's the only thing about her that I wish-"

"I wrote it in a card."

"Yeah. No, yeah. You're right. I guess it's not really something that you should just say in a Christmas card, but-"

"I'm just scared, I guess."

"Losing her completely."

"It says, uh, hold on. I've actually got it with me. Here."

"Yeah, she is. She really…is."

--------

Like any other day, the clock hits five as his eager eyes are watching.

He stands up quickly, running his hands along the front of his pants even though his palms are completely dry.

The therapist, with his notepad and his socks and his assumptions, opens his mouth like he wants to say one last thing, maybe he has some golden nugget of advice, but he closes it and smiles, nodding.

Outside, the snow is deep and he panics just for a brief moment at the thought of how long it will take him to get home.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **I struggled a lot with this chapter. And I'm still not completely satisfied. Anyway, sorry this took so long to get up. This story is turning out to be more of a challenge than I originally thought.

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He wakes up freezing, alone, in the dark.

Pulls the blankets around him and mutters, "Goddamn," under his breath.

This is nothing new, but it stings this time.

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"So her fiancé set a date."

"Honestly? I- I wanted to just- I wanted to throw myself overboard."

"Because I was going to tell her right then. I mean, I had my hand on her shoulder. I was saying, 'Hey, Can I talk-' And then there it was. Her wedding date. The period at the end of this stupid, run on sentence."

"Not only that, but earlier that night. God. We were out on the deck, alone, and she- I mean, I'd known before that she probably felt something for me, but right then? I knew for sure."

"Yeah. It was right there on her face, in her eyes. Like I could've kissed her and she would've let me. And then to see her so happy with her fiancé? Fuck. That's- I just shut down then."

--------

There are things he won't be telling him:

How he'd come home that night, barely managed to slip off his shoes and fallen into bed. How he'd sunk his teeth into the corner of his pillow and cried for two hours until he felt lightheaded and fell asleep.

How he'd called Katy the next night, apologized for as long as he'd cried the night before. How she'd come over reluctantly because he promised to make it right, swore he was going to be better this time. How he'd slept with her that night, just because he felt so disconnected and he needed that. How he'd broken up with her again the next morning and she'd called him a "fucking bastard son of a bitch," and he could only nod because he was a fucking bastard son of a bitch.

How Pam had asked him, "What's going on with you?" And he looked at her, not feeling anything at all and said, "I don't know."

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"To tell you the truth, I'm just angry."

"He was drunk. They've been engaged for three years and he can't even set a fucking date until he's drunk off his ass? And this is who she wants to spend the rest of her life with? Seriously? And she was so happy about it, too."

"I hate it. I absolutely hate it."

"I'm angry with her, I guess."

"She just refuses to…move."

--------

He feels like he can't breathe. No, he feels like he's going to be sick.

Without asking, he leans over behind the couch and cracks the window just enough to feel a cold rush of air hit his face. He takes a deep breath and then sits back down.

The therapist (still not _his_ therapist) gives him this nod, like he's saying, "Yes, I understand."

He fights the urge to rip this guy's head off right now, because he doesn't think he could possibly begin to understand.

--------

"I broke up with Katy that night."

"Because I- I don't know. It was weird. I was already going to break up with her before, because I had this master plan to tell Pam how I'm so in love with her and she was going to tell me that she felt the same way. But, then, when Roy set the date, it just hit me, you know? That I really didn't want to be with Katy. That I really was completely in love with this other woman. And even though that was the moment when I should've held onto Katy, when all of my hopes of ever being with Pam should've vanished, I felt more resolute than ever that I would-"

"Yeah, a deadline, exactly. That's it exactly. Now that there's a deadline, I feel like now's the time to do something. Or…I don't know. Now there's this push, I guess."

--------

The therapist uncrosses his legs and then crosses them again, covers his mouth with his hands, nods along with everything he's saying, squints his eyes like he's trying to solve a puzzle.

And on the tip of his tongue are the things he wasn't, isn't going to tell him.

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"Yeah, I do."

"What else is going to make me happy? Not my job, that's for sure."

"I wish I could answer that. I think if I could answer that, I wouldn't feel so, so-"

"Look, I know it's your job to ask me things like that. I know my mom's probably telling you to ask me that over and over, but here's the thing, as long as there's her, I'm not going anywhere. That sort of makes this all even more pathetic, doesn't it?"

--------

She'd asked him where he went every other Monday. They were having lunch and she said, "So, I mean, it's not really any of my business, but where do you go on Monday afternoons?"

He couldn't even think of a lie and just said, "Uh, I'm actually going to therapy."

She looked down at the table then. "Oh."

"I don't really need therapy, but my mom wants me to go. She thinks I'm- I don't know."

She'd smiled, looking sort of relieved. "Yeah, moms can be like that sometimes."

"Yeah."

She hadn't said another word to him.

--------

"I, uh, can we talk about something else?"

"I don't know. I just really can't talk about this anymore right now."

"Um. My roommate's thinking about moving in with his girlfriend."

"No. If he does, I'll probably have to move. I can't afford the rent on that house on my own."

"Yeah. I might get a dog."

--------

On the walk back to his car, he swears he sees her rounding the next corner, in the mirrored surface of a store window, everywhere. He gets to his car door and closes his eyes tightly. There's a pressure building there behind his eyes- No, all over his body. It makes his bones ache.

He's surprised, though, that when he does close his eyes that darkness that had become so familiar to him was absent. There was something else there instead. Something just in between darkness and light. Something better, but worse all at the same time. As if there were a curtain he could simply draw back if he could only find the edge of it.


	4. Chapter 4

The plastic is crinkling loudly in between his thumb and index finger. He twists it around as he listens to the peppermint click against his teeth as it bounces around, the sound seeming so loud within his head that he stops and just lets it sit on the back of his tongue until it starts to tingle and then he moves it to his cheek and smiles across the room at his therapist.

(Yes, his therapist. He's surrendered to the fact that maybe, just maybe, he needs this right now. He's started to think that everyone probably needs this and maybe that's what friends are supposed to be for. Then he feels even worse, thinking that he can't even find a friend that would want to listen to his problems so he has his mom paying this guy, what? Five hundred dollars a month? But she insists that it's fine and that he's one of the best therapists in the area. He thinks about people who really, really need this, but just don't have the money and it sort of makes him nauseous.)

He picks up the bowl again just to put his fingers in it and rifle around. Just for some noise to fill the silence that's fallen on the room.

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"You should get some chocolates are something. Don't get me wrong. Peppermints are great. I'm a huge peppermint fan, but sometimes I just want a good piece of chocolate. And, anyway, having a peppermint in your mouth makes it harder to talk. See? It's making my worlds are garbled."

"I'm just saying that maybe the option of having a piece of chocolate would be nice. You should poll your other patients. See what they think. I bet they agree that peppermints aren't the best idea."

"Maybe some of those miniature Hershey bars. I could sure go for a Mr. Goodbar right now."

--------

He's feeling uncooperative today. He feels like being difficult.

He's started to grow tired of just feeding this guy exactly what he wants to hear. He's grown so tired of just telling this guy what he feels. He's grown tired of that stupid look on his face when he does tell him what he's feeling. That look like, "Yes, yes. I know exactly why it is that you feel this way and I'm going to tell you why and you're going to then have some huge breakthrough about yourself." That look like, "I'm going to fix you."

Because he never does. Fix him, that is. He's never once come out of this office feeling any better than we came in. Most of the time, he feels worse. All of his problems now just below the surface of his skin, torn from where they were hiding deep within himself.

And it usually takes him until the next session to finally put them all back where they belong.

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"Not a whole lot's been going on. Uh, my car's doing this thing where it backs itself into other parked cars."

"Yeah, totally not my fault. I don't know what's wrong with my car. So now my taillight's smashed and I have to fix it and my bumper's all twisted."

"I know. Only three years old, looked like it was brand new. Now it's got a twisted bumper and a broken taillight."

"Work? Just the usual. Nothing too exciting besides my boss managing to burn his foot on his George Foreman grill."

"You really don't want to know."

--------

But there's this other thing that happened at work. It has curls and shiny teeth and skin that he's sure feels like cream. And it's convinced that three years ago he was able to turn off any feelings he might've had. Or maybe it's not so convinced, maybe they're just really great actors.

But today he's being difficult, obstinate. He's going to sit here and talk about inconsequential things like his car and his boss and-

--------

"What?"

"You think I can't make connections with people? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Or-"

"You think I think I'm incapable of connecting? That's…I don't know where you'd get that from."

--------

He's put a space between her and himself.

And even though the space is imaginary and he could very well go over to her and make her laugh until his breathing came easy again, he doesn't.

It's better this way, for both of them.

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"I have friends."

"There's Mark and there's the guys I play poker with sometimes…"

"Well, I've known Mark since my freshman year of college so almost ten years now."

"Yeah, we're pretty close."

"Maybe I don't want to connect with these people. To be honest, most guys my age are idiots and-"

"Pam? Yeah, I guess-"

"Okay, fine. I really only feel connected to Pam. Is that what you want to hear? That I don't have any real friends besides Mark and Pam? That my relationship with Pam is probably the closest friendship I have or maybe have ever had? Are these- I mean, what do you want me to say?"

"Fine. Here's the thing, I'm good at making friends and I'm good at meeting girls. I'm good at talking to people and getting people to like me, but that's not enough. You knew that already though, didn't you? You already knew that's what I'd say. That plenty of people like me just fine, but none of them know me at all. Not even Mark really knows me. Or my parents or my brothers. This is what you wanted me to say out loud even though you've probably already got it written right there on your notepad."

"Just her. She knows me."

"It's just this thing where she'll look at me and know immediately if I'm in a bad mood or if I've got something on my mind. She can just look at me and know."

"Yeah."

--------

He isn't having a breakthrough. These are things he already knew about himself. These are things he doesn't need reminding of.

He waits for his therapist to move or say something about why he's like this. Waits for it to be analyzed.

But all that really happens is his therapist takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands like he's tired or frustrated. And then when he's done, he looks at him with his glasses back on and doesn't say a word.

--------

"So?"

"Isn't this the part where you explain it to me? Tell me why it is that I can have so many friends, yet feel so lonely most of the time?"

"What am I supposed to do?"

"I'm sorry, can't you just…fix it?'

"Yeah, well, it would be a hell of a lot easier."

--------

On his way home, he stops at Poor Richard's to get a head start on getting these things back into their hiding places. Thinking he can drown them out with cheap beer, wash them back into the hollows of his chest.

It's working brilliantly until he hears a familiar laugh from a corner booth and doesn't have to look over to know who it belongs to. Then they're right back where they were before, just bubbling there beneath his skin and behind his eyes.

He finishes his beer and thinks maybe he needs a better therapist.


End file.
